What You Need to Know After You See Spider-Man: Homecoming

If you saw Spider-Man: Homecoming and want some more answers, you’ve come to the right place. We can still fill in some of the gaps, point out things you may have missed, and tell you everything else you need to know—with help from Homecoming’s director, star, and producers—about the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Friendly Neighbourhood hero.

The big reveal of Liz’s father was always part of the plan.

Spider-Man: Homecoming revolves around one crucial moment—the moment Peter Parker opens the door at Liz’s house and sees that Michael Keaton’s character is her father. Co-writer and director Jon Watts told me the reveal was one of their first ideas, and they never considered making the film without it:

It’s my favourite moment in the movie. You basically have to build the whole movie up to that moment to really make it effective. It’s almost like a record scratch. You think you know what’s going to happen and suddenly you have no idea what’s going to happen. And that to me is the absolute most fun thing as a director. It’s really fun to have a twist like that, but it’s also very nerve wracking because you want to make sure people don’t see it coming, and you want to make sure it doesn’t get given away.

“We shot those scenes over the basic two to three days and I’ve gone from a happy, jolly, fun-loving character to somebody who is seriously scared,” Tom Holland told me. “It was fun for me to switch things up and dive into a different emotion we hadn’t seen before. And I think audiences are going to be really shocked when they see that twist.”

Now that Aunt May knows Peter’s secret, Spider-Man is heading into uncharted territory.

Homecoming ends on a life-changing moment for Peter Parker, when Aunt May discovers that he’s Spider-Man. Kevin Feige told Cinemablend he isn’t sure how that will play out, but that’s part of the point.

“[It’s] very much like our instinct to say, ‘Let’s have Tony Stark say “I’m Iron Man” at the end.’ Well, what does that mean for the next movie? I don’t know, but it will force us to do something unique. We did not want to do the secret identity thing at that point in the MCU. And now, same thing. The dynamic now is forced to be something fresh and something unique going forward.

Marisa Tomei told Cinemablend she believes that having May know Peter is Spider-Man will keep this series unique. “It takes a big burden off of the character,” she said. “You don’t have to do the same thing over and over again, so he and I can have a different kind of relationship going forward.”

Michelle is not Mary Jane Watson.

At the end of the film, Zendaya’s character Michelle reveals that her friends call her “MJ.” MJ, of course, is also the nickname Peter Parker’s comic book love interest Mary Jane Watson traditionally goes by. While Zendaya is certainly playing Peter Parker’s love interest, she is not Mary Jane Watson. As Kevin Feige told IGN:

She’s not Mary Jane Watson. She never was Mary Jane Watson. She was always this new high school character, Michelle, who we know there’s an “M” in Michelle and an “M” in Mary... Is she going to date Peter? Are they going to fall in love? She seems to be intrigued with him. There’s a nice chemistry there. Who knows what will happen in the future films?

Don’t expect Spider-Man to use the new suit Tony made him anytime soon.

At the very end of the movie, Tony Stark reveals he’s made a second and even more impressive suit for Peter. But Watts hints that Spidey won’t be donning it for a while, as they haven’t even scratched the surface of the current suit.

“We had a whole stack of note cards of things that [the main] suit could do that we didn’t get a chance to show in this movie, so hopefully there will be a lot more with that,” Watts said.

The movie comes to a head when Peter Parker turns down Tony Stark’s offer to become an Avenger. It’s everything he’s ever wanted, and yet he realises it’s not the right time. With Spider-Man playing a role in Avengers: Infinity War, it seems like he’s more or less part of the team anyway, but with two more years of high school, odds are he’s not going to be moving out of Queens for awhile.

No one knows what the Spider-suit’s “Instant Kill” does... yet.

Once Peter has unlocked his Spider-suit, a bunch of new options become available to him. One in particular is “Instant Kill,” which seems like something very out-of-line with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“Yeah it’s a really weird and dark joke that always made everyone laugh so it stayed in there,” Watts said. “We had a joke about it where it’s not [used] to kill someone, [but] it would kill the engine, and if he had just used Instant Kill, he would have been able to shut down Vulture’s wingsuit right away. Not that that’s what it actually does but we thought that could have been a really funny reveal.”

Tom Holland claimed credit for the idea of the function but wouldn’t cop to what it does. “There’s a few different versions of what it does, but maybe we’ll find out in the next movie,” he said. So it’s possible it could still be used for a deadlier purpose.

Tony Stark didn’t make all of Peter Parker’s tech.

This seems pretty obvious, but it’s important. Yes, Tony made the new Spider-suit which has a ton of bells and whistles, but before he even met Stark, Peter Parker was already Spider-Man.

“The original Spider-Man [suit] in this movie is all made by Peter Parker,” Tom Holland told me. “The original webshooters, goggles, that’s all Peter Parker tech, it’s just been upgraded by Tony Stark.”

All that Civil War footage in Homecoming is completely brand new.

Spider-Man’s first appearance in Captain America: Civil War takes place during the massive airport scene, a scene that gets briefly revisited in the short film at the beginning of Homecoming, but from Peter’s—i.e., a physically new—point of view. I was curious if they used the original movie’s footage for it, or if they had to make it from scratch. Watts explained:

We recreated it. It’s funny. It’s such a big, expensive, elaborate thing to recreate. [There was] some live-action, some CG, but we rebuilt it all from scratch. I think we had to get ILM to dig all the assets out of deep storage so we could rebuild it, then film it with a virtual handheld camera. It was a huge, huge, huge hassle for that one little moment but I loved it.

There’s a timeline to the MCU technology stolen by the Vulture, but you can’t see it.

In Homecoming, it’s obvious that Toomes and his group have been taking and developing technology by scavenging from the events we’ve seen in previous movies, like the Battle of New York in The Avengers, the battle of Sokovia in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and the battle of Lagos in Captain America: Civil War. And while an eight-year jump from the beginning of their crimes to the present day seems to cover all of that, we wondered if there was a timeline of when and where each piece was acquired.

“They’re pretty vague in the Marvel Universe about locking anything to specific dates, as much as possible, so there is some wiggle room,” Watts said. “But we did our version of a timeline for where things would have arrived, and when, but I’m curious to see it go up against the fans.”

The film could have potentially introduced two new foes for Spider-Man.

Mac Gargan, played by Michael Mando from Better Call Saul, appears briefly early in the movie and shows up again during the end credits with a scorpion tattoo on his neck. In the comics, Mac is the Scorpion, a longtime Spider-Man villain whose DNA has been spliced with a scorpion and has a battlesuit that includes a giant tail with a poisonous stinger at the end. Since Mac tells Toomes that he and his evil friends are planning on killing Spider-Man, chances are he’ll be a pain in Spidey’s arselater on.

Additionally, Donald Glover plays Aaron Davis, who is also known as the tech-savvy villain called the Prowler. However, since he seems pretty laid-back in general (and with Spider-Man in particular), I think it’s unlikely he’ll come back as a big bad. However, David’s nephew, Miles Morales, may be important down the road...

Marvel’s future Spider-Man movies will focus on villains that haven’t appeared in previous movies.

Probably. By design, Spider-Man: Homecoming does not touch on almost anything from the previous five Spider-Man movies. And while that doesn’t mean they can’t in the future, don’t hold your breath for Green Goblin or Doc Ock just yet.

“We’re more interested in exploring villains you haven’t seen, before we go back and reinterpret villains you have seen before,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige told us.

Jennifer Connelly is the voice of Spider-Man’s suit.

She's also married to JARVIS and Vision actor Paul Bettany in real life. And she played Betty Ross in Ang Lee's Hulk.

We don’t know who is on that jet that leaves Avengers HQ.

It’s played as such a prominent moment in the film that we have to suspect the person’s identity will, or at least should, be revealed in a future movie. Chances are that movie will be Thor: Ragnarok or Black Panther. Someone flying into space or maybe off to Wakanda? Anything after that would be too far along in Peter’s story, since he’ll be back in Infinity War. (Unless, of course, it’s featured at the very beginning of Infinity War.)

Don’t get Tony and Pepper Potts a wedding present just yet.

Once Peter turns down his Avengers invite, Tony tells Pepper Potts to make up some big news that would justify the press conference he’s already called. He then suggests a marriage proposal. And though it’s not made clear if Tony goes through with it, Pepper’s reaction indicates that she may not say yes even if he did ask her.

No, that iconic Spider-Man and Iron Man shot from all the trailers isn’t in the movie.

What happened to Uncle Ben will stay a mystery for now.

In the comics, Uncle Ben is a crucial character in the creation of Spider-Man, but in Homecoming, he’s never mentioned by name and only maybe tangentially referred to (when Peter says May has been through a lot). No one would confirm if Ben’s fate will be revealed later, though when I suggested Ben might have died at the Battle of New York in the first Avengers movie, Watts said he found the idea “interesting.”

Peter Parker is indeed that kid in the Iron Man mask in Iron Man 2.

Spider-Man: Homecoming should be in Marvel’s Phase 3 Blu-ray box set, even though the film is being released by Sony.

Kevin Feige said the decision hasn’t been officially made yet (there are still a few movies to go, after all). But since previous Marvel movies released by Universal and Paramount were in the set, he’s almost certain it will be. So you should still be able to buy all of Phase 3 in one giant swoop.

We already know a little bit about the sequel.

Of course, we don’t know specifics, especially since neither a writer nor director have been attached yet, although Watts is expected to return. However, based on the release date, we do have some ideas.